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The Life and Times of Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet
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Narrated by:
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Michael David Axtell
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By:
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Edward Luce
About this listen
An intimate and masterful biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski—President Carter’s national security advisor and one of America’s leading geopolitical thinkers—from one of the finest columnists and political writers at work today.
Zbigniew Brzezinski was a key architect of the Soviet Union’s demise, which ended the Cold War. A child of Warsaw—the heart of central Europe’s bloodlands—Brzezinski turned his fierce resentment at his homeland’s razing by Nazi Germany and the Red Army into a lifelong quest for liberty. Born the year that Joseph Stalin consolidated power, and dying a few months into Donald Trump’s first presidency, Brzezinski was shaped by and in turn shaped the global power struggles of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. As counsel to US presidents from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama, and chief foreign policy figure of the late 1970s under Jimmy Carter, Brzezinski converted his acclaim as a Sovietologist into Washington power. With Henry Kissinger, his lifelong rival with whom he had a fraught on-off relationship, he personified the new breed of foreign-born scholar who thrived in America’s “Cold War University”—and who ousted Washington’s gentlemanly class of WASPs who had run US foreign policy for so long.
Brzezinski’s impact, aided by his unusual friendship with the Polish-born John Paul II, sprang from his knowledge of Moscow’s “Achilles heel”—the fact that its nationalities, such as the Ukrainians, and satellite states, including Poland, yearned to shake off Moscow’s grip. Neither a hawk nor a dove, Brzezinski was a biting critic of George W. Bush’s Iraq War and an early endorser of Obama. Because he went against the DC grain of joining factions, and was on occasion willing to drop Democrats for Republicans, Brzezinski is something of history’s orphan. His historic role has been greatly underweighted. In the almost cinematic arc of his life can be found the grand narrative of the American century and great power struggle that followed.©2025 Edward Luce (P)2025 Simon & Schuster Audio
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- Unabridged
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Joseph E. Stiglitz has had a remarkable career. What brought him to economics were his concerns about the inequality and discrimination he saw growing up. Wanting to understand what drives it and what can be done about it has been his lifelong passion. This book gathers together and extends to new frontiers this lifelong work, drawing upon the challenges and insights of each of these phases of his career.
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The Inevitability of Tragedy
- Henry Kissinger and His World
- By: Barry Gewen
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 18 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Few public officials have provoked such intense controversy as Henry Kissinger. During his time in the Nixon and Ford administrations, he came to be admired and hated in equal measure. Notoriously, he believed that foreign affairs ought to be based primarily on the power relationships of a situation, not simply on ethics. He went so far as to argue that under certain circumstances America had to protect its national interests even if that meant repressing other countries' attempts at democracy.
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Interesting but rambles
- By K on 02-17-21
By: Barry Gewen
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In Defense of Partisanship
- By: Julian E. Zelizer
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 5 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Partisanship is a dirty word in American politics. If there is one issue on which almost everyone in our divided country seems to agree, it’s the belief that the intense loyalty within the electorate toward Democrats and Republicans is the source of our democratic ills—division, dysfunction, distrust, and disinformation. The possibilities that responsible partisanship can offer were at the heart of an important intellectual tradition that flourished in the 1950s and 1960s, one which was institutionalized through a sweeping set of congressional reforms in the 1970s and 1980s.
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Decent Interval (25th Anniversary Edition)
- An Insider's Account of Saigon's Indecent End Told by the CIA's Chief Strategy Analyst in Vietnam
- By: Frank Snepp, Gloria Emerson - foreword
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 32 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Widely regarded as a classic on the Vietnam War, Decent Interval provides a scathing critique of the CIA's role in and final departure from that conflict. Still the most detailed and respected account of America's final days in Vietnam, the book was written at great risk and ultimately at great sacrifice by an author who believed in the CIA's cause but was disillusioned by the agency's treacherous withdrawal, leaving thousands of Vietnamese allies to the mercy of an angry enemy.
By: Frank Snepp, and others
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Radio Treason
- The Trials of Lord Haw-Haw, the British Voice of Nazi Germany
- By: Rebecca West, Katie Roiphe - foreword
- Narrated by: Jennifer M. Dixon
- Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1945, the New Yorker commissioned star reporter Rebecca West to cover the London trial of William Joyce, who stood accused by the British government of aiding the Third Reich. Joyce was alleged to have hosted a radio program, Germany Calling, devoted to Nazi propaganda and calls for a British surrender. The legal case against Joyce (known as "Lord Haw-Haw" for his supposedly posh accent) proved to be tenuous and full of uncertainties.
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relevant insight into psychology of totalitarian man
- By Trace on 05-14-25
By: Rebecca West, and others
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Ground Combat
- Puncturing the Myths of Modern War
- By: Ben Connable
- Narrated by: Tim Fannon
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
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Ground Combat reveals the gritty details of land warfare at the tactical level and challenges today's overly subjective and often inaccurate approaches to characterizing war. Ben Connable's motivation for writing the book is to offer an evidence-based approach to examining the future of war.
By: Ben Connable
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The Great Betrayal
- The Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in the Middle East
- By: Fawaz A. Gerges
- Narrated by: Keval Shah
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The Middle East is in upheaval: a widening chasm between state and society, the failure of governing elites to address citizens' genuine grievances, massive economic mismanagement—all made worse by repeated interventions by Western powers. Why has political change been so difficult to achieve? In The Great Betrayal, Fawaz Gerges argues that the convergence of political authoritarianism, meddling by the West, and the effects of prolonged regional conflicts have produced political paralysis and economic stagnation.
By: Fawaz A. Gerges
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The Big Lie
- Election Chaos, Political Opportunism, and the State of American Politics After 2020
- By: Jonathan Lemire
- Narrated by: Jonathan Lemire
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
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In the more than five tumultuous, paradigm-shifting years of Donald Trump’s presidency and beyond, his near-constant lying has become a fixture of political life. It is inextricably linked with how his party behaves, how the Democrats respond to it, and how he remains relevant, even after a decisive loss in 2020. Jonathan Lemire brings his connections, profile, and reportorial instincts to bear in his first book that explores how this phenomenon shapes our politics. The Big Lie is the first audiobook to examine this unprecedented and tenuous moment in our nation’s politics.
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Don’t bother
- By Susan S. on 07-27-22
By: Jonathan Lemire
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Exile Economics
- What Happens if Globalisation Fails
- By: Ben Chu
- Narrated by: Ben Chu
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
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In Exile Economics, Ben Chu lays out the dangers of the current obsession with isolationism. By focusing on some key internationally traded commodities - agriculture, energy, metals and high-technology - he demonstrates just how thoroughly enmeshed and almost unfathomably interconnected our economies have become. Exile Economics will be an essential guide to this new world in all its promise and peril.
By: Ben Chu
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Death in Derry
- Martin McGuinness and the Derry IRA’s War Against the British
- By: Jonathan Trigg
- Narrated by: Alan Turkington
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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When civil rights protests in the 1960s gave way to armed struggle, the Provisional IRA in Derry–both city and county–led the fight against the British security forces. In the city Martin McGuinness–a young butcher’s assistant from the Bogside–quickly rose through the ranks, launching a bombing campaign that reduced the city centre to rubble. In tandem, the IRA’s active service units fought the British Army in the streets and alleys of the Bogside, Creggan, Shantallow and the Waterside.
By: Jonathan Trigg
Excellent!!
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The writing was impeccable
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Excellent.
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On the downside the book was often times too detailed and could drag. The narrator was great, very distinctive and easy to understand. I enjoyed the book it was just a little too long.
A little too long
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